Word Games

Question

News: Arts and Entertainment

In October 2021, software engineer Josh Wardle uploaded his creation to the world—Wordle™. This once-a-day online game gives players six tries to identify a five-letter word, while offering clues and confirmations about which letters go where. Wardle's Wordle soon went from a gift he had designed for his sweetheart to a phenomenon played by millions.

"Even though I play it every day, I still feel a sense of accomplishment when I do it," Wardle told The Guardian.

Many people love word games, and Wordle follows in the grand tradition of crossword puzzles, Scrabble®, and word searches. Word enthusiasts from first-grade classrooms to retirement communities play them faithfully to cultivate vocabulary and stimulate their brains. Research shows that word games are excellent ways to exercise the mind and boost memory. Here's how a few favorites went from new ideas to household words.

Crossword Puzzles

Fans of crossword puzzles owe the word game to a newspaper editor named Arthur Wynne. In 1913, he wanted a new diversion for the FUN section of the New York World. He drew a grid of numbered squares matched with clues and christened it "FUN's Word-Cross Puzzle." A misprint subsequently renamed the game "Crossword Puzzle," and the change stuck. Wynne's winning creation quickly became a craze, and newspapers around the country developed their own versions.

One exception was the New York Times, which in one 1924 editorial demeaned crosswords as "a primitive sort of mental exercise." The famed newspaper held out until 1942, when it finally launched its own. Interestingly, many crossword connoisseurs now consider the Times puzzle the best of the best.

Scrabble

Alfred Mosher Butts claimed he wasn't good at spelling, but that didn't impede his invention of a classic board game for wordsmiths. The Great Depression of the 1930s left him unemployed, so he began toying with game ideas. His vision was to design a crossword-like word game that assigned points to the different letters. Games could then be scored for competitive play. He called it "Criss-Cross Words," but every major game manufacturer rejected the concept. Then Butts met James Brunot. Together they refined the rules and came up with the catchier name the game bears today.

Scrabble's big score came in 1952. According to legend, an executive with Macy's department stores encountered the game while on vacation and decided to stock it. Soon, customers were scrabbling for a set of their own. In total, Scrabble has sold 150 million copies in 29 languages. In the U.S., it is found in three out of five homes, according to Hasbro, the game's manufacturer.

Word Search

In 1968, Norman E. Gibat published a word game in his Selenby Digest in Norman, Oklahoma. He hoped people would play it while they stood in line at the grocery store. He concealed the names of Oklahoma cities in a grid of letters and challenged readers to find them. Word Search was born. It quickly became popular among area teachers, who spread the word to others. (About the same time, Spanish game-maker Pedro Ocón de Oro invented an identical game dubbed Sopa de Letras—"Soup of Letters"—and he often shares credit for developing the idea.)

Gibat's periodical folded in 1970. By then, though, word searches had taken on a life of their own, going by names like "Seek and Circle." Word Search games remain wildly popular, and many teachers use them to reinforce vocabulary.

Time will tell if Wordle joins the ranks of these legendary word games, but fame was never the motivation for its developer. As Wardle told the New York Times: "I think people kind of appreciate that there's this thing online that's just fun."

Think about and discuss these questions:
Which word game sounds most interesting to you and why?
What do you think is the secret to making a popular word game?

Question 4


4 / 8

Based on information in the article, which of these happened last?

The game called Scrabble became a hit at Macy's stores.
The word-guessing game called Wordle was published.
The first Word Search puzzle entertained Oklahoma readers.
The first crossword was printed in a New York newspaper.

Answer 1

Based on the information in the article, the event that happened last is:

The word-guessing game called Wordle was published.

Here’s the order of the events mentioned in the article for clarification:

1. The first crossword puzzle was printed in a New York newspaper in 1913.
2. The first Word Search puzzle entertained Oklahoma readers in 1968.
3. The game called Scrabble became a hit at Macy's stores in 1952.
4. The word-guessing game called Wordle was published in October 2021.